The casino and gaming businesses provide special rewards for their valued customers to determine the level of complimentary benefits those customers should receive. Presently, this system is managed by a person such as a pit boss or other casino employee on the casino floor. Such a person keeps detailed notes about certain players and tries to determine the length of time a player gambles, the total amount of money bet in one sitting, the average amount wagered at each bet, and other information about these players. The casino may then determine which players receive benefits such as lodging, meals, and other forms of special treatment.
The system just described depends almost entirely on the alertness and subjective analysis of the casino's floor observer or pit boss. Despite his best efforts, the pit boss can only observe a limited number of players at a time, and thus large casinos require quite a number of floor observers to cover the entire casino. Such a system is expensive, and by its very nature subject to mistakes in not gathering all of the available information to fully implement and exploit the system.
Fishbine et al., in U.S. Pat. No. 5,781,647 suggested a system that assists gambling operations at casinos in accurately tracking the gambling habits of its customers. The Fishbine et al. system tracked the length of the time a player played, amount of money he bet, and the average amount he wagered at each bet in order to determine incentives and complimentary benefits (free meals, limo, room, etc.) which should be offered to the right players. Such a system was also used to determine a player's pre-established credit rating.
However, the Fishbine et al. system apparently used a dedicated system for each player and was thus very expensive and inefficient for a large gambling operation. What is really needed is a system that can track the gambling of many players simultaneously in one system, and thereby perform the supervisory duties of one or more floor supervisors in a casino. Further, the Fishbine et al. system used an edge detection algorithm to sense the edge of each chip in a stack of gambling chips to determine the amount of a bet and such an algorithm has proved prone to errors in making such a determination. The Fishbine et al. also made no allowance for the effective placement of video cameras in order to capture an accurate image of the gambling area. Thus, there is also a need for a computer driven visual system for the gaming industry to more accurately determine the amount of a bet and to transmit information about a plurality of such bets to a central location for use and analysis.